On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 9:24 PM, Aurélien Levy <aurelien.levy@free.fr> wrote:
> The html5 specs change the specification on authorised elements inside the a
> element.
> Now I can have full div with ul p table etc inside an a element.
[snip]
> I'm bit concerned about that because if screenreader keep there current
> functioning it will read the whole content each time user access to the
> link. The list of links panel will become unusable and there is a massive
> risk of cognitive overload
Since it is already possible, albeit not conforming, to include
structural markup
inside "a" elements, since there is no restriction on the length of link text
generally, and since authors can achieve similar effects from a visual
perspective using "span" elements, this appears to be a situation screen
readers need to deal with regardless of what the specification happens to
bless.
In contexts where short link text would be preferred, one option would be for
the screen reader to use the contents of elements acting as summaries or
headings for the linkified content (such as the "h1" elements from the spec's
example). From this perspective, allowing authors to use structural markup
within "a" elements is actually preferable to the alternative of them using
"span" elements.
Another approach would be to truncate the link text, perhaps at the last word
required to render it unique on the page.
--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis